


Now I smell the rain

by fried_flamingo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode Tag, Episode: s13e01 Lost and Found, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 20:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12417741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fried_flamingo/pseuds/fried_flamingo
Summary: The Ford sits out front of the cabin like a dog left abandoned when its owners moved house.  Dean doesn’t even know where Cas got the damned thing.  “What about it?” he says, though he knows damn well what about it.





	Now I smell the rain

_In my thoughts I have seen_  
_Rings of smoke through the trees_  
_And the voices of those who stand looking_  
\- Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin 

They bury the bones just as the sun crawls over the peaks at Leadbetter Point. Hunters’ Ugly Truths 101: not everything burns. A pyre might blaze hot enough to free a spirit from earthly bonds, but there are always remains. Dean gives himself the task of finding the right spot to dig, far enough from shore that the Pacific’s cold fingers won’t reach it, deep enough that countless hiking boots won’t disturb their resting place.

The job of digging is backbreaking and mindless enough that it lets Dean just drift for a while, focussing solely on the rasp and rattle of the shovel through dirt. More than that, it saves him the job left to Sam. He’s raked through enough ash in his time for the remnants of the dead. He can’t bring himself to do that for –

The hole’s deep enough now, so Dean stands and wipes his face with the front of his T. “You’re up,” he says, at the sound of feet cracking the twigs and bracken behind him. He tosses the shovel down on the mound of dirt and brushes past Sam without looking at the sack in his hand.

“Dean…”

“Where’s the kid?” says Dean, still walking away.

“He’s in the kitchen eating his weight in 3 Musketeers.”

“Shouldn’a left him alone.”

“Dean, for God’s sake.”

“Sam, just… Just get the damn job done and let’s get outa here.”

Despite Dean’s unease, the kid is indeed sitting at the kitchen table with a mound of candy wrappers in front of him and a shit-eating grin on his face. “Jesus, how many of those have you –?” His own words stop him dead and he swallows against a hard ball of something that threatens to choke him. The kid’s smile fades and he tilts his head in question – he tilts his goddamned head and slants his eyes and it’s all Dean can do not to knock him from his chair onto the fucking floor. 

“What is it, Dean?” he asks, like he’s not the most powerful, useless bastard currently walking the Earth.

“Doesn’t matter. Get your jacket. We’re going.” He grabs his own jacket from the back of one of the chairs, as the kid – Jack – wipes his chocolate covered fingers on his pants and looks around at the mess he’s made.

“What should I do about this?”

“Nothing. Leave it.” The dude Cas and Kelly rented this joint from won’t be returning their deposit anytime soon and Dean figures it should more than cover some new sheets and curtains. A few candy wrappers and a chocolate-smeared table won’t make much difference.

By the time they make their way outside, Sam’s returning from the thicket of trees brushing dirt from his hands.

“We good?” Dean asks, knowing that he’s far from good, he’ll never be anywhere near fucking good ever again.

“Yeah,” says Sam, “it’s done.” But he’s still watching Dean the same way he watched him as they were driving out to Pirate Pete’s. Like he’s something fragile that’s about to break. 

_Christ, Sammy, aren’t you used to how this works by now?_

“Alright,” Dean says, fishing the keys to the Impala from his pocket. “Sooner we get back to the Bunker and figure out…” A glance to Jack, who’s still got that expression of puzzled fucking naiveté on his face. “… all of this, the better.”

He’s making for the car when Jack speaks. “What about that?” 

Dean looks where he’s pointing. _Motherfuckingshitfuckshit._ The Ford sits out front of the cabin like a dog left abandoned when its owners moved house. He doesn’t even know where Cas got the damned thing. “What about it?” he says, though he knows damn well what about it.

“We can’t leave it, Dean,” says Sam, echoing what Dean already knows. “If the owner of this place calls the sheriff –”

“Yeah,” he says, balling his first around the Impala’s keys, “I know.”

“You take Jack in the Impala. I’ll drive the truck somewhere and –”

“No,” says Dean, a little too sharply. He glances up at Sam and shakes his head. “No, I should drive it. The… the alternator’s a dick and if it breaks down you’ll be stuck.” That much was true, but it wasn’t _the_ truth.

“Sure,” says Sam, with a smile that says he gets it, he’ll play, whatever Dean wants. His acquiescence is infuriating. He gestures for the keys and Dean tosses them over.

“If he tries anything…” Dean points to Jack. “You taze his ass and call me straight away.”

“Dean, it’s cool. We’ll be fine.”

Though he would never agree with Sam out loud, Dean thinks that’s probably true; Sam seems to have some weird ability to talk the kid down. Dean guesses it’s a bonus of not being a complete asshole like him. “Alright, go find us a motel. I’ll call you when I’m done and you can come pick me up.”

Sam heads for Baby and slides his giant frame into the driver’s seat. Dean bites back a groan, knowing he’ll be adjusting the seat position for the next two weeks to get it back to his own ideal spot. Jack starts to follow Sam, but then stops, bows his head as if thinking on something, before turning and walking back over to Dean. “You’re angry,” he says. “You think you’re angry at me, but you’re not.”

_You don't think you deserve to be saved?_

“Is that right?” Dean grinds out.

“Dean, I’m sorry my father is gone,” Jack carries on, unaware that he’s about two seconds from being knocked flat on his ass. Dean doesn’t even care if he ends up floating in golden Nephilim air-Jello again. “I want to him back just as much as you do.”

And that’s it. That’s enough. He won’t let this punkass spawn of hell call Cas ‘father’ and give a name to their relationship easier than he can spit, just because he juiced Cas up with some satanic placenta mojo, when Dean couldn’t even –

He grabs the kid’s ugly faux-suede jacket and hauls him forward. “He’s not your father. You didn’t know him. You don’t miss him. And you don’t –” Dean squeezes his eyes shut and tries to forget his pathetic pleading behind the burger shack. _Please. Please, help us._ “You don’t want him back as much as I do.”

The little prick barely blinks an eye. Dean’s aware of how overwrought and pointless he’s being. Over Jack’s shoulder, he can see Sam watching him through the side mirror, but he stays put. Jack nods like he’s figuring out a puzzle and Dean releases his grip. “Sam’s waiting. Get outa here.” He stands and watches until Jack’s in the car and Sam’s pulling away in a rattle of gravel. He keeps his back to the truck until the last possible second. Like always, though, there’s work to be done and duty won’t wait for ever. With a breath that hurts, he turns back to the Ford.

Dean has lost enough people to know that grief is often strewn with ordinariness. Clothes returned in a sealed in a plastic bag, handed over by a sympathetic nurse and still bearing his father’s smell; the rancid milk, old vegetables and takeout that needed clearing from Bobby’s fridge; Kevin’s comic books organised in cardboard boxes in his room at the Bunker. Little glimpses of lives that those lost expected to return to. In Cas’s truck, all Dean finds is a Gas ‘n’ Sip receipt for $40 of regular and a copy of The New Republic. He guesses that last was for Kelly. 

As far as Cas goes, there is no sign of him in the truck’s small cab. The only smell is a lingering aroma of dirt and old grass. That’s just fine, Dean tells himself. If he’s going to have to drive this thing, he doesn’t want to deal with any distractions. Except it’s not fine. It’s not fine that some bones left to rot under dirt in a forgotten corner of the world are all that’s left of this angel who utterly changed his life. It’s not okay that there is no marker to say he passed this way once. Dean bows his head and digs his nails into the palms of his hand. Time to leave this place, time to get on the road and drive.

The truck, of course, doesn’t start. Dean bites down the urge to punch the dash; his hand might not take any more punishment. He thinks he’s already broken a finger as it is.  


“Come on,” he mutters, in a plea to the truck’s guts that most definitely isn’t a prayer. “Come on.” He waits a second, then turns the ignition again. The engine chokes and gutters and then, praise fucking Chuck, turns over with a satisfying rumble. As the engine starts, the stereo blares into life and the sound of it almost tears Dean down in one swoop of plucked guitar strings. He stabs at the off switch, cursing the flare of pain in the finger he’s sure is broken.

_I'll leave you when the summertime  
Leave you when the summer comes a rollin'_

His hand shakes as he reaches out to push the eject button on the tape deck, hoping that what’ll come out isn’t what he thinks, hoping it is. Knowing it is. The tape clicks out of its little slot and Dean sees his own scrawl on the white label. It feels suddenly like all air has left the cab and the low roof is pressing down on him. Dean scrabbles blindly for the door handle, shoves his way out of the truck and retches dryly, throat working but nothing, not even a yell, coming out.

_I can hear it callin' me the way it used to do  
I can hear it callin' me back home_

If he didn’t know that God had taken a powder, he’d have thought it some joke played by the Powers that Be, to have that song play at that time. He knows, though, that it’s just coincidence that it rolled that way. That _Babe, I’m gonna leave you_ was the last song Castiel ever listened to. That it was on the tape Dean had made for him, the one he’d handed over like it was nothing, like he hadn’t spent nights choosing the songs, then re-choosing them, then changing his mind back and forth about whether to hand the damn tape over at all.

He wonders if Cas ever made it to track 13, if he got what Dean was saying to him with that one.

The truck’s engine is still idling while Dean braces his arms on the top of the cab and breathes deep to try and clear his head. Some would call it tragic, an inevitable end, a man brought low by his own hand. And maybe these were the cosmic consequences they’d been warned about for breaking Billie’s deal. Dean thinks it’s something else. Dean thinks it’s a balancing of the scale.

Because for all the shit he and Sam dealt with, for all the people who have died in the slipstream of the Brothers Winchester, he knows that in the great cosmic checking account, he’s withdrawn more than he’s paid in. Sam, Cas, his mom – hell, even Bobby in a way, they’ve all been returned to him, often more than once. Most others? They didn’t get the same pay-off. No miraculous return of the loved ones for people like Michelle Tilghman. Michelle got to watch the man she loved die and stay dead. All the way dead.  


Dean guesses he was due a call to even the score long before Cas put a blade through Billie’s chest. He guesses that’s fair. But Dean doesn’t give a rat’s ass for fairness. He still wants him back.

It tears him in two that, this time, it ain’t gonna happen.

He climbs back into the cab and looks at the tape still sticking out of the stereo. In its absence, the radio hisses, spitting out unintelligible snatches of talk from an untuned station. Cas is gone, all the way gone, but Dean needs to hold onto something in the here and now. He needs something he can wrap his pain around.

Shoving the tape back in, he hits the forward button immediately, because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to listen to that song again without his heart breaking fresh. He lets it spool enough that it’ll be well past that one and into the next. After a few stops and an imagined lecture from Sammy on the convenience of joining the digital age, he finds what he’s looking for. Driving strings and pounding bass take hold of him as _Kashmir_ swells its melody.

Dean closes his eyes and rests his head back against the driver’s seat. He says thank you, and he says he’s sorry. And he hopes he’s somewhere better.

On the stereo, Robert Plant sings on oblivious, “ _All will be revealed…_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> 1) As many of you will already know, Leadbetter Point, WA doesn't have peaks. The Vancouver coast, however, does. Liberties with topography have therefore been taken.
> 
> 2) I know what Track 13 is, but I think you'll all probably have your own ideas, so you decide.


End file.
